The Birds Read online

  Copyright © Tarjei Vesaas 1957

  Copyright © Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS 1957

  English translation copyright © Peter Owen, 1968, 1995

  First Archipelago Books Edition, 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Originally published as Fuglane by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS, 1957

  English translation first published by Peter Owen, 1968

  This edition published by arrangement with Peter Owen Publishers, London

  Archipelago Books

  232 Third Street #A111

  Brooklyn, NY 11215

  www.​archi​pelago​books.​org

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Vesaas, Tarjei, 1897-1970.

  [Fuglane. English]

  The birds / Tarjei Vesaas; translated from the new Norwegian by Torbjørn Støverud and Michael Barnes. -- First Archipelago Books edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-914671-20-6 (paperback)

  1. Brothers and sisters--Fiction. 2. Orphans--Fiction. 3. Birds--Fiction. I. Støverud, Torbjørn, 1918-2000 translator. II. Barnes, Michael P., translator. III. Title.

  PT9088.V6F813 2016

  839.823’72--dc23 2015022820

  Cover art: Simon Hantaï

  Distributed by Penguin Random House

  www.​pengui​nrand​omh​ouse.​com

  Archipelago Books gratefully acknowledges the generous support from Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-914671-21-3

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part II

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part III

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  I

  1

  MATTIS LOOKED TO see if the sky was clear and free of clouds this evening, and it was. Then he said to his sister Hege, to cheer her up: “You’re like lightning.”

  The word sent a cold shiver down his spine, but he felt safe all the same, seeing the sky was perfect.

  “With those knitting needles of yours, I mean,” he added. Hege nodded unconcerned and went on with the large sweater she was making. Her knitting needles were flashing. She was working on an enormous eight-petaled rose which would soon sit between the shoulders of some man.

  “Yes, I know,” she said simply.

  “But then I’m really grateful for all you do, Hege.”

  He was slowly tapping his knee with his middle finger – the way he always did when he was thinking. Up and down, up and down. Hege had long since grown tired of asking him to give up this irritating habit.

  Mattis went on: “But you’re not only like lightning with eight-petaled roses, it’s the same with everything you do.”

  She waved him aside: “Yes, yes, I know.”

  Mattis was satisfied and said no more.

  It was using the word lightning that he found so tempting. Strange lines seemed to form inside his head when he used it, and he felt himself drawn toward it. He was terrified of the lightning in the sky – and he never used the word in hot summer weather when there were heavy clouds. But tonight he was safe. They had had two storms already this spring, with real crashing thunder. As usual, when the storm was at its height Mattis had hidden himself in the privy; for someone had once told him that lightning had never struck such buildings. Mattis wasn’t sure whether this applied to the whole world, but where he was at least it had proven blissfully true so far.

  “Yes, lightning,” he mumbled, half to himself, half to Hege, who was tired of his sudden bragging tonight. But Mattis hadn’t finished.

  “I mean at thinking, too,” he said.

  At this she looked up quickly, as if frightened; something dangerous had been touched.

  “That’ll do for now,” she said and closed the matter abruptly.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Just you sit quiet.”

  Hege managed to suppress whatever was trying to come out. The fact was that the tragedy of her simple brother had haunted her for so long now that whenever Mattis used the word think she jumped as if she’d been stung.

  Mattis knew something was wrong, but he associated it with the bad conscience he always had because he didn’t work like other people. He rattled off his set piece: “You must find me some work tomorrow. Things can’t go on like this.”

  “Yes,” she said, not thinking.

  “I can’t allow this to go on. I haven’t earned anything for—”

  “No, it’s a long time since you came home with anything,” she blurted out, a little carelessly, a little sharply. She regretted it the moment it was said; Mattis was very sensitive to criticism on this point, unless he was doing the criticizing himself.

  “You shouldn’t say things like that to me,” he told her, and there was an odd expression in his face.

  She blushed and bent her head. But Mattis went on: “Talk to me like you talk to other people.”

  “Yes, alright.”

  Hege kept her head down. Whatever could she do with the impossible? Sometimes she couldn’t control herself and it was then her words hurt.

  2

  BROTHER AND SISTER were sitting on the front steps outside the simple cottage where they lived by themselves. It was a fine, warm June evening, and the old woodwork gave off a lazy smell after a day in sunshine.

  They had been sitting there for a long time without saying a word – until they began talking about lightning, and about earning money. Just sitting there, side by side. Mattis sat looking at the treetops with a steady gaze. This sitting of his was a familiar sight to his sister too. She knew he couldn’t help it, or she’d no doubt have asked him to stop it.

  The two of them lived here by themselves – there were no other houses – but there was a road and a large cluster of farms just beyond the line of spruces. In the other direction sparkles of light were coming from a broad lake, with distant shores beyond. The lake came right up to the slope below the cottage, and here Hege and Mattis kept their boat. The small clearing round the house was fenced in and belonged to them, but beyond the fence brother and sister had no say.

  Mattis thought: She doesn’t know what I’m looking at. He felt tempted to tell her.

  Mattis and Hege – they’ve got doubles! Hege doesn’t know that
.

  He didn’t tell her.

  Just beyond the fence stood two withered aspen trees, their bare, white tops jutting up among the green spruces. They stood close to each other, and among people in the village they were called Mattis-and-Hege, though not openly. It was only by accident that Mattis had got to hear the names. They were almost contracted into one word: Mattis-and-Hege. They must have been in use for a long time before Mattis heard them.

  Two withered aspen trees side by side, in among the green growing spruces.

  He felt a stirring of protest against the names and couldn’t stop looking at the trees. But Hege must never get to know the secret, he decided, every time they sat there like this. She’ll only fly into a rage – and the trees have got their names now anyway.

  At the same time the very fact that the two trees remained there gave Mattis a quiet sense of protection. Admittedly they were nothing but a nuisance, and did damage were they stood, but the owner didn’t come and cut them down in front of your very eyes and throw them onto his fire. That would have been too awful somehow, here, in front of the people shackled by their names – almost like murder. And that’s why he doesn’t do it. I should like to meet that man someday, thought Mattis. But then he never comes here.

  Mattis went on thinking:

  I wonder what he’s like inside, the man who found such pleasure in inventing those names for the treetops? Impossible to say. All you could do was sit and think about it during summer evenings here on the step. But it was a man who’d done it. Mattis refused to think it had been done by a woman; his feelings toward women were friendly. He was angry, too, that Hege had been compared to a withered treetop, it was nothing like her! Surely anyone could see that. The clever and wise Hege—

  What is it that hurts so much?

  You know very well, came the reply, somehow meaningless, yet straight to the point.

  I ought to turn away and not look – instead I sit staring at them, first thing in the morning and last thing in the night. Nothing could be crazier than that.

  “Mattis?”

  He was jerked out of his thoughts,

  “What is it you can see?” she asked.

  He knew these questions of hers so well. He mustn’t sit like that, mustn’t do this and mustn’t do that, he ought to be like other people, not Simple Simon as they called him, the laughingstock wherever he went and tried to work or do anything else. Quickly he turned his eyes on his sister. Strange eyes. Always helpless, shy like birds.

  “I can’t see anyone,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “You are strange,” he said. “If I saw something every time I looked around—what would it be like here? The whole place would be crowded.”

  Hege just nodded. She had somehow brought him back and could go on working. She never sat idle on the steps like Mattis, her hands were busy knitting, as they had to be.

  Mattis looked at her work with respect, this was what put food on their table. He himself earned nothing. Nobody wanted him. They called him Simple Simon and laughed whenever his name was mentioned in connection with work. The two things just didn’t go together. There were probably dozens of stories going around among their busy neighbors in the village about what happened when Simple Simon tried to work. Everything always went wrong.

  You’re my beak against rock, he suddenly thought as he sat there—and gave a start.

  What?

  But it was gone.

  The image and the words shot through him. And were gone again just as quickly – instead he seemed to be staring at a blank wall. He flung a quick glance at his sister but she hadn’t noticed anything. She sat there small and neat, but no girl anymore, she was forty years old.

  Suppose he mentioned things like that to her? Beak against – she wouldn’t understand.

  Hege was sitting close to him, so he had a good view of her straight, dark brown hair. Suddenly he noticed a gray hair here and there among the brown ones. Long silvery threads.

  Have I the eyes of a hawk today? he thought in a flash of happy wonder, I’ve never noticed this before. Impulsively he exclaimed: “But Hege!”

  She looked up quickly, reassured by the tone of his voice. Ready to join in: “What is it?”

  “You’re starting to go gray!”

  She bent her head.

  “Am I?”

  “Very gray,” he said. “I’ve never noticed it until today. Did you know about it?”

  There was no reply.

  “It’s pretty early,” he said. “After all, you’re only forty, and so gray.”

  Suddenly he felt something gazing at him from somewhere. Not Hege. From somewhere. A cutting gaze. Perhaps it was coming from Hege after all. He felt frightened and realized he had done something wrong, yet without really being aware of it; after all he had only been sharp-eyed.

  “Hege.”

  At last she looked up.

  “What’s wrong now?”

  No, what he wanted to say had gone. No more gazes either.

  “It’s nothing really,” he said. “Just get on with your knitting.”

  She smiled and said: “Alright then, Mattis.”

  “Okay, and you don’t mind, do you?” he said gently. “My talking about your gray hair?”

  She just tossed her hair as if in a kind of half-playful obstinacy: “Not really. I knew about it already.”

  Her flashing knitting needles had been busy the whole time. They seemed to work automatically all day long.

  “Yes, you’re sharp-witted, you really are,” he said, to make up for what he shouldn’t have said.

  This gave him another opportunity to use one of those words that hung before him, shining and alluring. Far away in the distance there were more of them, dangerously sharp. Words that were not for him, but which he used all the same on the sly, and which had an exciting flavor and gave him a tingling feeling in the head. They were a little dangerous, all of them.

  “Do you hear, Hege?”

  She sighed: “Yes.”

  Nothing more. Oh well, that was who she was. Perhaps he praised her too much?

  “But really, it’s too early to be going gray,” he mumbled softly so she didn’t hear it. What about me, I wonder? I must have a look before I forget.

  “Are you going to bed, Mattis?”

  “No, I’m just—” going to take a look in the mirror, he nearly blurted out, but stopped himself and went inside.

  3

  IT WAS ONLY as Mattis entered the house he noticed what a lovely evening it was. The big lake was as calm as a mill pond. Beyond it, the ridges to the west were covered in haze – they usually were. There was a smell of early summer. On the road, which was hidden behind the trees, the cars seemed to be humming just for the fun of it. The sky was clear, there would be no thunder tonight.

  Straight through lightning, he thought. And shuddered.

  Straight through straight, he thought.

  If only one could.

  He remained standing deep in thought by the bench that opened up and became his bed at night.

  From an early age Mattis had slept on the bench in the living room – so he really knew it well. He’d decided that he’d go on doing it for the rest of his life. There were scratches in the bench from the time when Mattis was a boy and had been given a knife. There were also thick, faded pencil marks on the unpainted wood, from the time when he had been given a pencil. These lines and strange figures lay underneath the lid, and he looked at them every night before he went to sleep, and liked them because they never changed. They were what they were supposed to be. You could rely on them.

  The little room at the back was Hege’s. Mattis tore himself away and went into it, for that was where the only mirror in the house hung.

  He entered her room. There was a clean smell there, but little else, apart from the mirror he needed.

  “Hm!” he exclaimed as he caught sight of himself in the glass.

  It really was a long time since he had looked at him
self in the mirror in this way. Now and then he came in here to fetch the mirror when he was going to shave. But then he concentrated on shaving, and even so he didn’t get the stubble off properly.

  Now he was looking at Mattis, sort of.

  No, no! said a voice inside him. A silent little cry he couldn’t really explain.

  “Not much to look at,” he mumbled.

  “Not much fat,” he added.

  “Not much flesh either.”

  “Badly shaven,” he said.

  It sounded depressing.

  “But there’s something though,” he said quickly and went on looking.

  The mirror was not perfectly good either, it distorted the image – but both he and Hege had got used to this over the years.

  Mattis hadn’t been in there long before his thoughts began to wander, standing as he was in this clean-smelling feminine room.

  I’m standing looking at myself in the mirror like a girl, he thought, and felt a sense of well-being creeping over him.

  I’m sure many a girl has stood looking at herself in the worn glass of this mirror before putting on her clothes.

  He conjured up many beautiful, alluring images.

  Let me think of them.

  But he stopped himself.

  No, mustn’t think of girls in the middle of the week. That’s not allowed. Nobody does that.

  He felt uncertain: I’m afraid I do, now and then, he admitted.

  But nobody knows.

  He looked himself in the face. Caught his glance, it was immediately filled with defiance. Surely I can, as long as I don’t tell anybody.

  It’s just the way I am.

  He caught his glance again – now his eyes widened and opened out, full of expectation.

  What’s this?

  Well, I never, said a voice inside him, full of wonder, yet addressed to no one in particular. Sometimes you had to say things like this, for almost no reason, for far less reason than he had now.

  “But this isn’t much to look at,” he said aloud. He had to brush aside all the things that had taken possession of him, but that didn’t belong to the moment.

  The face opposite him was thin and full of thought. Pale, but a pair of eyes pulled at him and wouldn’t let go.

  He felt like saying to the person in front of him: Where on earth do you come from!